‘It was a real s**t show’: Life By You dev opens up on the game’s abrupt cancellation

After the recent cancellation of Life By You by Paradox Interactive, one of the development team members expressed their disappointment after being laid off from the company and learning about the news through a public announcement.

“Today, I am devastated to announce that for the second time in two years, my game has been cancelled, and I’ve been laid off. And this time it was a real shit show, ya’ll,” Willem Delventhal said on LinkedIn on June 19, who was working on making Life By You a reality.

According to Delventhal, the team was doing extremely well. The team had approved the internal metric they were aiming for, and they exceeded that number by a “significant portion.” As a result, they also got a thumbs-up from the Paradox team two weeks before the launch.

After this, the development team was kept in “purgatory,” and the developers at Paradox Tectonic did everything in their power to convince the company that the title was worth launching. The game was delayed twice before its early access on June 4.

Delventhal’s words directly contradict Paradox’s statement regarding the game’s cancellation on June 18, which states the title didn’t meet the team’s expectations. Paradox Interactive’s deputy CEO, Mattias Lilja, said the game was lacking in some key areas, which made the studio think having a time extension was not going to cut the rope in realizing the game’s full potential.

The CEO further promised a long and hard look to understand what went wrong with the development and avoid this kind of situation in the future.

Life By You was an upcoming sim life, and fans saw the title as an alternative to the popular The Sims. The game’s moddable promise got fans excited about its overall potential. But now, the game will never see daylight and will join the pile of titles that never made it out of the development cycle to the mass audience.